Donnerstag, 28. November 2013

The name is program

Okay, it has been more than a year since I opened this blog hoping that I would soon fill it with progress news about my next AGS game, but alas, I got too swamped in stuff.

Granted, I DID work on the game, even coding something that could be called a short adventure game on its own, using dummy graphics and concept arts from the game-to-be. But it was all rough work and I suppose I would never have finished it anyway because, let's face it, hand-drawing EVERYTHING in Broken Sword quality is too time consuming for a hobby project.

So now after playing both Edna & Harvey games in a row I am hyped enough about adventure games to give it a second try. I said goodbye to using high resolution and settled for 800x600 which is enough for good detail but still allows for pixel art that can be done quickly.

The first design for the player character started like this:

But I didn't want my player sprite to look like a boy from a 90's cartoon show, so that first design was radically altered:

I liked the new look because it was a little sci-fi, which was exactly what I was going for. This design got a sideview and even a whole walkcycle (still rough and prone to strange movements, but nonetheless a lot of work):

It still needed a few polishes, but was usable! I was actually a little proud of it because it was the first non-pixelart animation I ever did that not only looked decent, but actually good.

I used it for left and right and that together with the standing image was actually enough to use it as a dummy while I did some coding on the first few rooms which I also drew in the rough. Then, fatigue got me as I realized that it would be near impossible to maintain this quality. 14 months went by.

As I said I played the Edna & Harvey games, and while I didn't want to use that hand-drawn cartoony style even though it would be much quicker than the Broken-Sword-esque style (because it wouldn't fit my story and general feel of the game I was going for) the first of these games showed me that what I wanted to do was overkill. It was ambitious and a great foundation for a commercial game, but for an amateur like me it was just a bit too ambitious. So I went back to what I was used to, and that was pixeling the sprites.

Today, I finished the first try of the pixel version of the player sprite:

It IS a comic book style and not as realistic-looking as I originally intended, but it is not so comic-y that the story will lose its seriousness, and above all, it is clean and easier to animate than hand-drawn sprites.

I will probably make a few changes here and there (namely: shirt design, hair detail, maybe shoes), but overall, I'm happy with how he turned out. Let's hope that it won't take another 14 months until I can post my next progress report!